


Midnight compass

by laughingpineapple



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Canonical Character Death, Cool grandpa, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hope, Imp Hugs, Nonhuman Characters, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26173117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: There are three ghosts atop the desert, there are two old friends saying goodbye, there is one glimmer of the Midnight Star, there are no Nightwings left.
Relationships: Ti'zo & Tariq | The Lone Minstrel
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Press Start VI





	Midnight compass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dee_Moyza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Moyza/gifts).



> I booted up a new campaign to check the Nightwings' exact status during the years-long hiatus... to the best of my understanding, after the tragedy at the liberation rite, Volfred stopped at Wakingwood and told the others to go bury the blackwagon and call it quits (self-evidently, this decision was short-live: we know that he soon started scouting for someone like Oralech but less dead and eventually vetted Hedwyn. But he explicitly says that he had the thing buried to be done with the Nightwings). Consequently, Tariq is found inside the blackwagon taking his depression nap... and Ti'zo isn't there. It looks to me like during the game Tariq woke up, rushed to reach Ti'zo, they sent a messenger imp to Volfred, they saw the howlers close in on the blackwagon, Ti'zo rushed in to help and finally he and the group rejoined Tariq near the Cairn. So this is my take on a bit of backstory for how they ended in these starting positions. Most of the worldbuilding details are completely made up; the Imp Fact (tm) is in the flavor text of the Moon Sign mastery. Thank you for your beautiful requests, dear recipient! I hope you're having a great time with this exchange!

The Lone Minstrel ran across the desert with weightless grace. White sand shone under his feet as he slid past the shelter offered by the ruins of Beetle-dunes and braved the sunlight that filled the blinding vale beyond.

Ti’zo followed that gray dot over the sparkling sands and through the last abandoned outpost. The minstrel’s shape got lost under the tents, flags and veils of red and purple fabric that still billowed in the wind. But there was only one way out of the ghost town and Ti’zo kept going. He saw him again on the crest of a tall dune, long frayed cape flowing behind him, and so the little imp zipped and fluttered until he reached him, and took refuge in a fold of those big puffy sleeves, giving out a big tired yawn as his wings gave out.

Ti’zo waited for Tariq to say something. Anything. He had been waiting for days.

Tariq, too, was waiting for Ti’zo to say something. He needed his friend to bare his fangs to the world and get ready to fight: fight a fish, fight an opposing triumvirate, fight the Archbeast Sung-Gries itself who carried the Fall of Soliam on its back, why not, that used to be Ti’zo through and through. The little one always had a fire in him; Tariq thrived on reflected light. Now, with the imp resting in silence, looking at him for guidance, Tariq could only keep carrying out his duties.

He remembered this stretch of the desert from the last time the Blackwagon had landed in Jomuer Valley and he had accompanied the Reader Volfred in the pursuit of his vocations. There they had seen that from the white sands grew a shrub blooming with a rare flower whose seeds would, in time, come to be as thick and heavy as a shrivel-plum’s pit. They had left it undisturbed, turning instead their attention to the Book.

The memories of Volfred got swept away by the wind, but the flowers’ shriveled rests remained, carrying their seeds.

So Tariq kneeled down to gather them. They were a valuable find, these charseeds, as they caught the sunlight (or the heat of a stove) and kept it stored within themselves for hours, releasing their warmth throughout the night.

“This shall serve the Nightwings well,” Tariq said. These were his first words since the farewell at Wakingwood, where he had left Volfred deep in mourning.

_My friend_ , replied Ti’zo in a row of heartbroken clicks and whistles. _There are no Nightwings anymore._ He propped himself up, fluttering away from Tariq’s cape to get a good look at the minstrel’s face. The imp saw him stiffen in his usual unnatural way, as if he were not a part of this imperfect material world and so facts and pain, loneliness and exhaustion could slide past him. This was, of course, a lie, one that Ti’zo could see all too well. His friend was alive. Made of moonlight and carrying music in his veins instead of blood, but he was alive. He knew death, like Ti’zo did. But he would not face it and the weight of this tragedy was too much for a lone imp to carry.

_Open your eyes, Tariq._

As if heeding Ti’zo’s command, Tariq raised his head. He stared at the horizon, squinting under the brim of his hat. Howlers were coming.

Howlers had been closing in on them for a long time, Ti’zo heard them in the wind and knew their stench. _For old times’ sake?_ , he skreeched. The rush of a skirmish was a welcome thing at last, a distraction from the memories that kept filling all the space in his head.

But Tariq would not follow his lead, hurt, maybe, by Ti’zo’s earlier lack of faith. “They should know better,” he replied, and the wind dropped. The Lone Minstrel stood very still, absolute, unbothered by the passing of time and the slow turning of the world. For a moment, in the cosmic distances above them, past the dizzying colors of the afternoon sky, the stars flickered differently and struck a discordant note.

The desert fell silent. The air carried the smell of sand and tar. Nothing lived there except for the herald and the imp. Nothing hunted.

Tariq turned to look at Ti’zo then, yellow pupils glowing with a cold edge in the alien darkness of his eyes.

“I shall be tending to the Blackwagon,” he said, and walked away. As the stars ordered, as the Scribes willed. As Volfred told them to, but Volfred in his deep-rooted grief also told them to go bury the old heap of wood, and what then? What of the Nightwings then, Tariq?

Ti’zo did not mean for him to open his eyes like that, he only wanted a hug, and told him so in so many howls and squawks. If Tariq heard him, he did not show it.

They were creatures of the Downside, herald and imp both, inasmuch as Tariq could be said to belong to any land. It was their nature to cross these grounds alone, or so Ti’zo told himself as he let out a defeated little sigh and headed back East.

*

Tariq stood on the wagon’s rooftop, alone and unburdened. Above him, the moon shone also alone and unburdened. In nights like those, it is known, imps flock to the highest points in the land to bathe in moonlight. When the nearest peak from Licksand was the Cairn of Ha’ub, a comforting place to one who had long worn the raiments and a memento for the last remaining relative of the Accursed Scribe, it was easy to imagine where his companion may have disappeared to. The minstrel had apologies to offer, so he picked up his lute and followed the barren path toward the Cairn.

The night was muted as he began the ascent. No pyres were lit, no-one would reach this place to reach enlightenment under the wisdom of the Midnight Star. The Rites were broken. Tariq hummed a lonely song to keep all other thoughts away as he rose past the red crags and climbed onto the colossal skeleton of Shax Six-Shoulders. When he found himself shifting to the tune he had dubbed ‘the will of the Scribes’, he fell silent altogether.

Eventually, he found a colony of imps perched on the bone-titan’s ribcage, chattering as imps are wont to do, and huddling for warmth, since frozen droplets of the titan’s blood still to this day float close to its corpse, shining like glacial stars in the desert night. From the makeshift stage of the celestial landmark, Tariq addressed his audience and told them an old tale, in hopes that one of them, at least, would find it agreeable.

It was a story as old as Ha’ub, as it took place during the Imp-Scribe’s latter days, and it told of the first time the Nightwings found their triumvirate shrunk to two. The exiles blessed by the blue raiments were the nomad Sobel, the demon Gadriel and the wyrm Douglas in those days, he recited with perfect clarity as if the centuries-old memory were still fresh in his mind. His memories of the Nightwings always were: friends, companions, readers all. So in those latter days of the Scribes, disaster struck when the Downside claimed for itself the newcomer Sobel in a hunting accident, leaving his companions uncertain and grieving. The stars waited with bated breath for the Nightwings to resume their wanderings and allow the other triumvirates to be tested; Ha’ub offered to lend them one of his Dissidents, whose ranks had recently grown to five, but the bonds of his chosen exiles, tied by their virtues of Difference and Conviction, were so strong that not one of them would abandon their comrades, not even for a most exalted triumvirate, not even one that would, all in all, honor those same virtues. What happened then was that en route to Plaguemont, during a stop at Ragged Rock, of all places, they met a hungry, wet and stranded cur by the name of Abby Tugleg, and as they rescued her, not only did they offer her food and drink, but, finding her agreeable, they welcomed her into their ranks. Before three moons had passed since Sobel’s demise, the Nightwings could resume their travels.

The imps clamored for Tariq to join them. He bowed, tipping his hat, and followed their calls, climbing up the titan’s ribs until he sat down an an end of his vast audience, cape spread behind him, legs dangling into the void. The imps closed in on him. He brushed their minds until he found Ti’zo, whispered a quick apology with the sincerity afforded by that kind of intimate Reader-bond and spoke up again. At the edge of his thoughts, he felt the little imp hop closer and closer, headed toward him.

There was another tale, he said, this one more recent, from a quiet time, the time of Ha’ub’s daughter. The Nightwings in those years were a harp who had shed her name and two saps, Holly T. Candleside and Q. Acton Boab, T for Tamara, Q for Quennel, or so they said. The two saps brought much of their people’s qualities to the Blackwagon: wisdom, inventiveness and a deep entrenchment in melodrama. So deep, in fact, that for eight months the two refused to talk to each other over what amounted to a mere trifle. So the Rites came to a halt. Once their quarrel petered out, they took up the raiments again. Such is the cycle of the Rites.

Tariq ended his tale with an armful of imps in his lap; among them, kicking his brethren to get a more comfortable spot, lay Ti’zo. The minstrel stood in his place, letting the imps settle down. Lively bunch. As mortals should be.

 _You came_ , Ti’zo chirped.

“My friend,” Tariq replied.

_I thank you for the stories about my grandfather and the days of my mother, which make me quite happy in these sad times._

Tariq nodded. Ti’zo was the heir of a bright legacy and shone in his own right. But not in the last days, not then and there. As silence fell between them, he waited for the rest of his friend’s thoughts. They had all the time in the world.

_...but these stories are not our story._

“The Scribes watch over us,” Tariq repeated, knowing it to be true, and knowing that this observation was distant and powerless, and yet all they had. “The cycle is not broken.”

Ti’zo shoved out a peer and nested himself deeper into the soft gray fabric, shaking his head. All this sadness, so much bigger than an imp. Maybe his friend was big enough to weather it all, but not he.

_What does it matter? They are broken. Oralech will not fish with me anymore... don’t you miss him too?_

And Tariq whose opinions were as intangible as the wind under the full moon still had no choice but to answer truthfully to a direct question, so he said, in a whisper: “Yes... like an eclipse that will not lift,” and allowed himself at last to accept this fact in full.

He had found a beacon in these last Nightwings, with their talks of freedom, their plan, their revolutionary spark. For a few blessed turnings of the world, he had believed in them with the same intensity he used to direct at Soliam Murr when he had traveled as his retinue. They were gone, as mortals do, but all so quickly, so wrong, taking their spark with them. He held onto Ti’zo. With slumped shoulders, he buried his face in the imp’s fur and let out a broken sigh. A falling star crossed the moon.

Ti’zo nudged him, nose to nose. He was not alone in missing them! They were in this together! It was a simple truth, because imp-thought cannot grasp the complex ones, but at the same time it is rarely led astray. He purred his appreciation for being held and for knowing that Tariq, too, felt so deeply, and for the softness of his hair, which felt as light a cloud. The four imps which had taken his favored place in Tariq’s lap joined the purring, since, it is known, imps are gregarious creatures, and there was still some tenderness to be found in the Downside, and life went on somehow.

*

“Seeing you here now, I am of the understanding that you may not wish to return to the Blackwagon,” Tariq said eventually, scratching the fur behind Ti’zo’s horns. “You would not be wrong. To follow me back would be an exile within this land of exiles, one you never deserved.”

Ti’zo let him talk, wondering where this would go. It was true that he had little love for the thought of going back to the dead silence of his old home. The colony had taken to him in the few hours they had spent together and the light of his grandfather which shone brightest over this place was a welcome comfort. On the other hand, it was not unheard of for the noncommittal minstrel to shift his own thoughts and wishes onto Ti’zo, so he wondered if Tariq was not, in truth, speaking for himself. He pictured them both making a life for themselves near the Cairn, singing in the canyons, fending off unruly curs.

In the end Ti’zo could not shake that suspicion, but the herald remained duty-bound, as was his nature.

“There can be freedom for you in the Downside,” he said. “You can reach for it away from the cycle of the Rites and the stars will always smile upon you, brightest son of Ha’ub, tonight and always. But I would ask you to believe in the Scribes and in history’s long reach, which is longer than you or I can see, and take comfort in the stories I told you, for they are true and their truth, however far now, will come around again. I refuse to relinquish this hope.” He took a sharp breath, caught between the defiance inherent in such a strong claim and the instructions whispered to him eight centuries earlier, which asked him to do just so. “I shall carry it within me, ensuring that faith in the Nightwings will remain unwavering for as long as the stars that guide them burn in the sky. Please, grant me your trust.”

Ti’zo could grant him that and an imp-kiss on the cheek too. Maybe that would be enough.

_Is this goodbye?_

“Yes, my friend. I am afraid it is, for a time.” Tariq reached out to his mind again. He took comfort in Ti’zo’s clarity and straightforward affection; in turn, he lent him the wisdom of an age. They treasured the time spent together in this communion. As they let go of the connection, they both knew with great certainty that Tariq would be back one day, ushering a new group of exiles toward the Midnight Star. He would find Ti’zo, then, or his offspring, or their offspring or further still in a distant future, and they would still be bound together, forever strands in the same braid.

In that hallowed court, those who did not belong, belonged. An ember fell from the stars to the field below. Ha’ub smiled upon them.


End file.
